More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Alabama’s death rate is still running rampant. At one point in the past month, the state averaged as many as 100 deaths per day in the span of a single week. It also has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country; roughly 42% of Alabamans are fully vaccinated. As part of the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by Joe Biden in March, the state of Alabama will receive some $2.2 billion in federal funding aimed at alleviating the crisis in its borders; according to The Washington Post, states have broad discretion in terms of how they want to spend that money. And in Alabama—which, again, is still struggling to get a handle on COVID-19—lawmakers have chosen to devote about a quarter of it to building new prisons.
Yes, that’s correct: Alabama state officials have proposed spending up to $400 million in federal pandemic relief funds to build at least three new prisons holding some 4,000 inmates. “I am pleased and extremely hopeful that we are finally positioned to address our state’s prison infrastructure challenges,” GOP governor Kay Ivey said in a statement. “While this issue was many years in the making, we stand united to provide an Alabama solution to this Alabama problem.” Ivey justified the use of relief funds on the prison project—the projected cost of which is $1.3 billion—by saying that the state won’t “have to borrow quite as much money and pay all that money back.”
Alabama lawmakers seem to have jumped on the bandwagon with her. Republican state senator Greg Albritton, who chairs the Senate’s budget committee, will likely sponsor the bill to reallocate the funds and has said that doing so will not run afoul of the law. What’s more, it appears that many of his colleagues agree. Alabama House Speaker Mac McCutcheon said earlier this month that lawmakers have shown “a very positive” response to the proposition. “We’re going to take advantage of federal dollars that’s going to be made available to us,” he said.
Naturally, the plan has faced heavy criticism from advocacy groups. The American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund condemned the proposal in a letter signed by 40 organizations. “Building prisons was not the intended use of these funds and will leave our communities without the lifeline the American Rescue Plan was supposed to be,” they wrote. Shay Farley of the SPLC Action Fund highlighted the fact that Alabama’s small businesses and health care facilities are still facing urgent funding needs due to the pandemic. “That means $400 million less for assisting small businesses, funding over-burdened rural health care facilities, providing schools with much-needed personal protective equipment, and much more,” Farley said, according to the Montgomery Advertiser. “We urge the Legislature and the governor to reconsider this plan and redirect these funds to better-suited ventures.”
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